Over the past week, Israeli forces have bulldozed and uprooted 3,000 olive trees belonging to Palestinian farmers in the village of al-Mughayyir, near Ramallah.
The village of al-Mughayyir has been under lockdown since Thursday after an Israeli settler claimed that someone fired shots in his direction.
The deputy head of the village council, Marzouq Abu Naim, told Palestinian news agency Wafa that Israeli soldiers had stormed more than 30 homes since dawn on Saturday, destroying residents’ property and vehicles.
The Israeli military issued an order to uproot olive trees in a 0.27sq-km (0.1sq-mile) area in al-Mughayyir, a village of about 4,000 residents northeast of Ramallah.
Al Jazeera reports: For decades, the Israeli military has uprooted olive trees – an important Palestinian cultural symbol – across the occupied Palestinian territory as part of the country’s efforts to seize Palestinian land and forcibly displace residents.
The West Bank also has seen a surge in Israeli military and settler violence since Israel launched its war on Gaza in October 2023, and tens of thousands of Palestinians have been forced out of their homes.
More than 2,370 Israeli settler attacks against Palestinians have been reported across the area from January 2024 to the end of July this year, according to the latest figures from the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).
The highest number of attacks – 585 – was recorded in the Ramallah area, followed by 479 in the Nablus region in the northern West Bank.
At least 671 Palestinians, including 129 children, also have been killed by Israeli forces and Israeli settlers across the West Bank in that same time period, OCHA said.
“We have to be clear that since 1967, Israel is still implementing the same plan of evicting the Palestinian population from the countryside and the cities of the West Bank. What’s going on right now is just a continuous process of this eviction of Palestinians. It’s not a new Israeli process,” Zubeidat told Al Jazeera.
He noted that al-Mughayyir has a long agricultural history and, like other villages in the West Bank, relies almost entirely on agriculture and livestock as its main source of income.
“This area where more than 3,000 olive trees [were] uprooted is one of the most fertile areas in this part of the Ramallah area,” Zubeidat explained.
“Uprooting trees, confiscated water springs, blocking and preventing Palestinians from accessing their farms and water sources means more food and water insecurity.”
Israeli bulldozers are seen leveling indigenous Palestinian land as part of their assault on the Al-Mughayyir village, northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank:
Israeli occupation forces continue their invasion and aggression on Al-Mughayyir village, northeast of Ramallah in the occupied West Bank, throughout Saturday night:
updated from:
Israeli Army to Uproot Hundreds of Trees in Al-Mughayyir
Israeli occupation authorities issued a military order on Friday mandating the uprooting of hundreds of trees from the lands of Al-Mughayyir village, northeast of Ramallah, in the central part of the occupied West Bank, under the pretext of “security concerns.”
The order targets three distinct areas of village land, totaling approximately 297 dunams, and claims the tree removal is for “urgent and military purposes, to protect human life.”
According to the Wall and Colonization Resistance Commission, the directive includes all trees listed in the military order, alleging their presence poses a “security threat” to the segregated settler-only Alon Road, which cuts through the village’s territory.
Amir Daoud, Director of Documentation and Publication at the Commission, clarified that most of the targeted land lies west of the segregated road—used exclusively by illegal Israeli colonizers and soldiers—with the remainder situated to its east.
Daoud emphasized that this military order is part of Israel’s broader strategy to forcibly clear all lands east of the Alon Road. He noted that, in its current form, the order does not entail formal confiscation of Al-Mughayyir’s land, though its impact is unmistakably dispossessive.
Since Thursday, Israeli forces have been carrying out a wide-scale invasion of Al-Mughayyir, involving the uprooting of hundreds of trees and the bulldozing of vast agricultural areas surrounding the Alon Road.
In addition, several Palestinians sustained injuries following a violent assault by illegal paramilitary Israeli colonizers in Masafer Yatta, located south of Hebron, in the southern part of the occupied West Bank.
All of Israel’s colonies in the occupied West Bank, including those in and around occupied East Jerusalem, are illegal under International Law, the Fourth Geneva Convention in addition to various United Nations and Security Council resolutions. They also constitute war crimes under International Law.
Article 49 of the Fourth Geneva Convention states: “The Occupying Power shall not deport or transfer parts of its own civilian population into the territory it occupies.” It also prohibits the “individual or mass forcible transfers, as well as deportations of protected persons from occupied territory”.
